328 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
are not supposed by the people to be of equal 
antiquity with the atua fauau po , or night-born 
gods. 
They were probably men who had excelled their 
contemporaries in nautical adventure or exploit, 
and were deified by their descendants. Hiro is 
conspicuous amongst them, although not exclu¬ 
sively a god of the sea. The most romantic 
accounts aie given in their aai , or tales, of his 
adventures, his voyages, his combat with the gods 
of the tempests, his descent to the depth of the 
ocean, and residence at the bottom of the abyss, 
his intercourse with the monsters there, by whom 
he was lulled to sleep in a cavern of the ocean, 
while the god of the winds raised a violent storm, 
to destroy a ship in which his friends were voy¬ 
aging. Destruction seemed to them inevitable— 
they invoked his aid—a friendly spirit entered the 
cavern in which he was reposing, roused him from 
his slumbers, and informed him of their danger. 
He rose to the surface of the waters, rebuked the 
spirit of the storm, and his followers reached their 
destined port in safety. 
The period of his adventures is probably the 
most recent of any thus preserved, as there are 
more places connected with his name in the Lee¬ 
ward Islands than with any other. A pile of rocks 
in Tahaa is called the Dogs of Hiro; a mountain 
ridge has received the appellation of the Pahi, or 
Ship of Hiro; and a large basaltic rock near the 
summit of a mountain in Huahine, is called the 
Hoe or Paddle of Hiro. 
Tuaraatai and Ruahatu, however, appear to 
have been the principal marine deities. Whether 
this distinction resulted from any superiority they 
were supposed to possess, or from the conspicuous 
